


finesse

by thunderbirdyy



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: But Mostly Smut, F/M, Semi-Public Sex, Vaginal Fingering, featuring some very little plotty buildup, its smut my dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:14:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21574312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderbirdyy/pseuds/thunderbirdyy
Summary: Everything circles back to him, and as much as Kethryllia hates the concept of fate, she isn’t sure what else to call this.Maybe it doesn’t need a name.
Relationships: Zevran Arainai/Female Tabris, Zevran Arainai/Female Warden
Comments: 1
Kudos: 79





	finesse

**Author's Note:**

> what if we kissed and we were ass naked in the stream and we were both elves haha just kidding...unless

When Kethryllia returns to camp from the Circle of Magi, she almost cries with relief. She hadn’t expected to find the Circle in such disarray when she set out to recruit its services to assist the Grey Wardens in the Blight, though she’s quickly come to find that nothing is ever as simple as she may hope. 

There is just enough daylight left for her to steal away to the stream for a quick bath to wash away the blood and ichor that clings to her skin and mats her hair. She lets Wynne know where she is headed off to before she leaves, as she doesn’t trust Zevran not to make a lewd comment nor Alistair not to blush himself into a coma. Besides, she rather likes Wynne and is happy to have been able to bring her along. 

The first stars of the evening glow faintly in the sky that is slowly fading to black as she plops herself into the water without grace. It is cool and refreshing, washing away the grime that has caked itself on over the course of her escapades within the tower, though she feels particularly filthy and weighed down after the hours spent trekking through the fade. She tries not to think about it, but when she closes her eyes to slip under the water, she sees Zevran tied down and awaiting torture. 

What unsettles her most is that it was no mere dream, but a memory. 

She emerges from beneath the surface with her hair saturated and heavy, but finally clean. A breeze comes through and chills her, causing goosebumps to raise on her exposed skin. 

“Careful, Warden,” drawls an infuriatingly familiar voice from the darkened treeline, “Leaving yourself so vulnerable and so alone is dangerous. Someone may try to assassinate you.” 

Kethryllia thrashes, falling back into the water with a splash.

“Zevran, I  _ hate _ you,” she says without venom, spitting lake water and crossing her arms over her chest once she rights herself. For all the annoyance she feels, Kethryllia can’t stoke the flames of her anger, and the feeling fizzles out into hardly an ember, and that’s when she realizes she pities him. 

He, the very person who months ago was the courier of her death, is now the cause for an ache in her chest without a single dagger to the heart. She often thinks about who she was before her wedding day, and who she could have been had the Wardens not interfered. Now, she wonders who  _ he _ was before whatever he endured that made him an Antivan Crow. 

Zevran sits at the water’s edge. “It gets less believable each time you say it.” 

She submerges herself to the neck and rolls her eyes. “You seemed fairly vulnerable today.” 

That shuts him up. For just a second, the libidinous and confident-bordering-on-arrogant air he keeps about him wavers. He recovers with practiced precision that would fool the less perceptive. She’s been watching carefully, though, and catches the instant that his smile breaks and its light no longer reaches his eyes. 

“Ah, yes, a strange thing, the fade,” he muses, catching his reflection in the blade of his dagger. “I am glad to not be caught up in the complications of magic.” 

“That wasn’t a dream.”  _ Maker _ , she’s bad at this. Her tongue is far from silver. If anything, it’s lead, and she clumsily plods along and tries to feel her way through the start of a somewhat meaningful conversation. “What happened, I mean. That was a memory. They actually did that to you.” 

“They did.” He shrugs. “I let them.” 

She frowns. It is in his nature to deflect, and most of the time, she lets him. This time is different, however. She wants to know, to understand. What she will do once she does, she is unsure. Comforting others is not her strong suit, and that is assuming he even wants to be comforted. Perhaps she should drop it. 

“It was that important to you to become a Crow?” 

“My options were to survive it and become a Crow, or die there on that table. My career path had been chosen for me from quite a young age.” 

In no way can it compare, but she knows something of having little say in choices. She was less than pleased with her arranged marriage, and she also supposes she knows quite a bit about the choice between killing or being killed. 

“Sorry for prying,” she says, averting her gaze to where the light of the moon dances on the water. 

“No need for apologies, Warden.” Zevran sighs and begins shedding his armor. “Do you mind if I join you?” 

Just like that, the moment is over, as if she never asked. In most cases, she would be glad--appreciative, even. Conversation beyond surface level has never been easy, and she usually prefers to avoid small talk where she can. She had wanted it this time, though. 

As he pulls his undershirt over his head, she realizes that maybe she wants  _ this _ , too. 

“No,” she says abruptly, and he freezes. “I don’t mind.” 

He looks surprised, and then entirely too pleased with himself. Before she has time for second-guessing, his fingers are already hooked beneath the waistband of his underclothes, and he shoots her a wink. Her eyes immediately stop trailing the curving black ink that follows the jut of his hip. 

“I  _ can _ revoke my invitation, you know.” Her threat is empty, and they both know it. 

“But will you, I wonder?” Without ceremony, he removes the last of his clothing and tosses it into the growing pile along with his discarded armor. 

The moment she sees him entirely bare, she ducks beneath the water as if the cool stream will do anything to subdue the sudden flush of heat through her body. It is, unsurprisingly, not successful, but she stays submerged until her lungs burn, and when she resurfaces, she keeps her eyes closed. 

Her ears twitch when she hears the sloshing that means he’s joined her in the water. Out of fear of looking anymore ridiculous, she opens her eyes, but keeps them fixed on her hands beneath the surface, until another’s hand reaches out and lightly grasps her chin, tilting her head upward. 

She thought she understood what it meant for someone to be breathtaking, but looking at him with this tightness in her chest, only now does she realize it can be literal. Rivulets of water drip ever downward in separate winding paths along the inked skin of his abdomen, and as she watches them, her mouth goes dry. She briefly wonders what would happen if she were to catch one of the droplets on her tongue. 

“Won’t you stand and let me see you?” He coaxes, looking her in the eye with his usual boldness and general lack of shame. 

Like a siren call, she heeds him, albeit hesitantly. The soaked dark brown locks of her hair cling to her as she stands upright, stark against the pale skin of her chest, back, and shoulders. Her mouth is dry and her face is hot, but she wills herself not to break eye contact and straightens her posture. 

She fails to notice his unoccupied hand reaching out to touch the jagged scar that runs the length of her abdomen. The uneven diagonal line stretching from her right hip to beneath her left breast had been a wedding present. It stands out among the myriad of healed-over wounds that litter her body. 

Zevran looks thoughtful, as if he considers saying something, then decides against it for what Kethryllia is inclined to believe is the first time in his life that he’s opted for silence. Instead, he smooths his fingertips over the rigid pinkened skin, causing her muscled stomach to tense under his attention. 

She isn’t sure how long they stay like that, suspended in a moment that feels like forever. It’s been so long since she’s been this vulnerable in front of anyone, and there she stands at the peak of her foolishness, bare naked, far from camp, and alone with a renowned contract killer. He could jam a knife between her ribs and disappear back to Antiva, but then she remembers both of his hands are occupied, and they’re occupied with  _ her.  _

“You know what that’s from?” she asks. 

He raises an inquisitive brow. 

“It’s from a man with a blade.” She glances down at her body then back up at him. “ _ Many _ of these are from men with blades.” 

The sounds of emerging nightlife are almost inaudible under the hummingbird thrum of her heart. Around her, the air feels thick. 

“Tell me, Zevran, what makes you different?” 

Her hands, though trembling, reach out to smooth along his arms. 

“I should warn you, Warden, asking an Antivan for pretty words is dangerous business.” He smiles. “But if reassurance is what you wish, you shall have it.” 

He takes one of her hands and guides it along the plane of his stomach, leading it to rest on his lower back, just above the curve of his ass. 

“No weapons on me, I promise, but you are welcome to check.” With a wink, he loops an arm around her waist and pulls her close. “Is it so hard to believe that I want to spend time with a beautiful woman?” 

Pressed to him like this, she can feel his half-hard cock against her hip, and she swallows thickly. “Is that what you tell everyone you sleep with before you kill them?” 

“Like I said, no weapons.” He shrugs. “You and I are equally matched, and should you decide to drown me, well. That is rather poetic. Like a siren, no?” 

It scares her, how much she wants to trust him. Whether she actually  _ does  _ is debatable, but she  _ wants  _ to, and being unable to tell if he is genuinely multifaceted or nothing more than a skilled liar is unfathomably frustrating.  _ This  _ is why she fights her way out instead of talking, but she isn’t sure if there is even anything here to fight. 

Looking back on the collection of stolen moments she’s gathered away from the chaos of the Blight, she finds him in all of them. It is his nimble fingers braiding her hair, his voice reciting lurid poetry, his laugh ringing through the camp. Everything circles back to him, and as much as Kethryllia hates the concept of fate, she isn’t sure what else to call this. 

Maybe it doesn’t need a name. 

She inhales sharply. “Just kiss me before I change my mind.” 

“Is that a command, Warden?” 

Despite the quip, he doesn’t give her time to answer. His hands fall to her hips and pull her impossibly closer, and before she has time to reply she is quickly overtaken by a searing kiss. Her arms reach up to wrap around his shoulders. 

Kethryllia has known passion in many forms. She has felt it in the heat of her blood as she cut down her enemies and swelling in her chest as she roared a battle cry, but is different. If Kethryllia is a wildfire, Zevran is an ember--warm, controlled, and constant. He burns with unassuming consistency, a lingering threat. His hands wander Kethryllia’s body with practiced patience. Her flashfire tactics are sundered. All she can do is be consumed by smoldering heat as he plants kisses along her neck that lead to the pointed tip of her ear. He nibbles on it and she shivers, worrying her lip with her teeth. 

“No one is going to hear you,” Zevran laughs, “Unless our beloved Chantry boy is secretly a peeping Tom.” 

“Don’t talk to me about Alistair while I’m naked.” 

“Fair enough.” 

She doesn’t notice one of his hands disappearing beneath the surface until a calloused finger brushes her clit. The water ripples around them as her hips jerk to chase the sensation. His fingers slide along her slit, teasing before two of them sink into her. 

“ _ Shit _ ,” she sighs, leaning her forehead against his chest. Her nails dig into the tops of his arms. 

He crooks his fingers, starting a slow in-and-out rhythm. “You’re awfully wet.” 

“We’re in a stream,” she says, but cannot fight the flush in her cheeks. 

Under the water, she can see the tendons in his forearm flex when she glances down, straining as she grinds against the heel of his hand. She’s watched those hands intently more times than she’d like to admit. The offer for a massage that he had dropped casually into a mundane conversation ended up haunting her for weeks. Every time he sharpened a blade or laced his boots, she would watch and wonder, but for as often as she’s thought--or perhaps more truthfully, fantasized--about his hands on her, nothing can hold a candle to the real thing. 

“I’ve often wondered if you were anything in the bedroom like you are on the battlefield,” Zevran muses as if making smalltalk, his fingers unyielding as he revels in the erraticism of her movements against him. “So wild and uninhibited. There is such strength in you, and it is untamed and beautiful. I cannot tell you how many times I have looked at you after a fight, disheveled and glorious, and wanted to take you against the nearest tree.” 

Kethryllia keens, his words like electricity along her spine. In her mind’s eye, she sees it: her hair matted with blood and her trousers around her ankles as the rough bark of a tree bites into her skin. It is sloppy and fast, far from the practiced seduction he boasts, and  _ Maker _ , it’s perfect--too perfect. 

Without warning, she goes rigid, clamping around his fingers as she comes undone. A strained whine ekes its way past her parted lips. Her brows knit tightly together, and her eyes screw shut while her hips spasm. 

“Wow, already?” He asks, removing his fingers from her sex then immediately taking them into his mouth. “Oh, it appears our Warden tastes as sweet as she seems.” 

“Bullshit,” she huffs. 

With her weight still resting against him, she can feel him, now fully hard, against her stomach. It sends another thrill of arousal through her, and before she can think too much about it, she takes his cock in hand and gingerly swipes her thumb along the head. The full-body shudder he gives in response is certainly rewarding. 

Something about having an Antivan Crow in her hands like this fills her with a sense of pride she could very well get drunk on. “Are you going to keep sweet-talking, or are you going to shut up and fuck me?” 

“I don’t see why I can’t do both,” he retorts, but braces his hands on her thighs nonetheless, lifting her further out of the water and easing her down onto his cock without preamble. 

She locks her legs around his waist and clings to his shoulders. The delicious stretch of her body to accommodate him wrenches a moan from the depths of her chest. It takes a few seconds to realize he is kissing her neck again, biting lightly at the skin. She tangles her fingers into the damp tresses of his golden blond hair. 

“Fuck, move, you can move.” She shifts her weight, trying to drive him deeper. 

He laughs in response, pulling back from the crook of her neck to rest his forehead against hers and kiss her. “Your wish is my command, Warden.” 

Zevran’s fingers dig into her thighs as he fucks her in earnest. She wonders if they will leave bruises, and she doesn’t exactly hate the idea. If she can’t work up the courage to look him in the eye again after this, at least she’ll have a reminder for a while. That, however, is a concern for later. It’s difficult to think about much else besides the sensation of his cock driving up into her at the moment, and she lets herself get carried away. 

She writhes, deciding that if the future is uncertain, she will take what she wants  _ now. _ There is an almost-tangible rubber-band snap of her inhibition, and when she feels it, he feels it, too. His responding grin is wolfish. 

“There she is,” he croons. 

Her thighs tighten around his hips, and he, in turn, slides his hands further back to grip her ass. Though she is small, she has a warrior’s body, made of solid muscle and unbridled power. He watches, enraptured, as the muscles shift and flex with each move she makes against him, greedy and willing to take whatever he gives. 

And then she shifts, and stars burst behind her eyes. She yelps, clinging to Zevran like a lifeline in a desperate attempt to keep him there at that angle, hitting that spot. 

“Fuck,  _ fuck _ .” She groans into his shoulder. 

He says something in return, but she isn’t sure what it is. She can feel his chest heaving with effort as he attempts to stave off his own approaching climax as her walls start to flutter around him each time he thrusts into her. 

She starts to snake a hand between them to reach for her clit, but a swift bite to her neck gives her pause. Her large blue eyes are hooded when she looks to him for an explanation. 

“No,” he says, laving his tongue over the fresh teeth marks. “On my cock.” 

Dumbstruck, she simply nods, allowing him to chase his end. The water sloshes around them as he pounds into her, and all she can do is hold on. It isn’t long before she feels the heat building in the pit of her stomach, crackling along every nerve ending and shooting up her spine. She can’t believe it, she’s going to cum like this--

And she does. With a silent scream, her whole body tenses, coiling like a spring and stealing the breath from his lungs. He fucks her through the tremors that wrack her body, and shortly after she finishes, so does he, pulling out and spending on her stomach with a sound she wishes she could bottle for rainy days. 

For a short while, there is only labored breaths, hammering heartbeats, and the babbling of the stream. She relaxes her hold on him and slides back into the water, wordlessly washing his spend from her skin. 

“So,” he says with a contented sigh, “Next time--”

She freezes. “Next time?”

“Yes.” He pauses. “Unless you don’t want there to be a next time.”

“I didn’t think ‘next times’ were your thing,” she says, crossing her arms and shrinking back in on herself again. 

“Well, then, maybe we’re both full of surprises.” He stretches, then yawns and makes his way to the bank of the stream. “It’s getting late, and not to mention, cold. As much as I do enjoy seeing you naked, you’d better get out soon before you catch your death.”

As she watches him get out of the water, the silvery moonlight glistening off his wet skin, she has a sneaking suspicion she already has. 


End file.
